


Can't Take That Away From Me

by morecivilizedage



Series: Explorations with Ella & Louis [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Heavy Petting, M/M, Post-Order 66
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-11
Updated: 2015-10-11
Packaged: 2018-04-25 20:29:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4975432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morecivilizedage/pseuds/morecivilizedage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cody, Rex, and the spaces left by Order 66.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Can't Take That Away From Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [norcumi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/norcumi/gifts).



> This was supposed to be nothing but really sad porn and ended up much more heavy petting and introspective. Whoops.
> 
> In other news, so apparently this is a series now; blame norcumi for that. Also she wrote the summary, which means it's her fault you read this. Blame her for that, too.
> 
> Inspired by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong's "They Can't Take that Away From Me"

That they even managed to find each other in the aftermath was something of a miracle. Rex would laugh, if he could. One last blessing to a pair of lost souls. Cody reaches out for him, calloused finger pads drawing along the harsh contours of his face. He wonders what he must look like; it must be something awful, given the way Cody is watching him, careful and concerned. Inside Rex feels hollowed-out, but when Cody slowly draws their lips together closer he lunges forward, suddenly desperate to remind himself that he—that they, together—haven’t lost everything. Cody is real, is present and that he– he’s here, too. Their teeth clack loudly as they impact but Rex can’t bring himself to care when their lips split with the force of it. It is a battlefield of a kiss–bruises and blood and tears that they both refuse to acknowledge. Cody doesn’t mind, judging from the desperate keen he releases as Rex grips his shoulders with a force that is, perhaps, unwarranted.

Rex breaks away with just as much violence as he had placed in their kiss. It is Cody who crawls closer, who braces himself over Rex’s lap and presses their foreheads together as they pant for breath. Cody who is always steady, Cody the unshakeable, Cody who always knows what to do when everything else seems uncertain. Cody moves to rest in his lap, and it is only because Rex is looking down as their foreheads rest together, counting each of their breaths that he realizes Cody is trembling. Tremors so strong that Cody’s body quakes with the force of it, held steady only by grip Rex refuses to release. Cody leans up again for another kiss, and Rex lets him take it. Brief, gentle, sweet, and more painful for it. Following is an empty space–a pause left for the ghost of someone else to move in, to laugh, to reach out and draw them nearer to sun-freckled skin and a laugh as warm as russet hair. Rex wants to shudder, but he just can’t bring himself present enough to do so. Cody is trembling enough for the both of them.

Rex brings his hands down, a steady pressure from Cody’s shoulders down to his forearms and then sliding back up, over the shoulders and down his shirtless sides, until he can grip at Cody’s hips. He drags Cody down to sit in his lap and draws him forward still, skin flush against skin. Cody’s head dips of its own accord, nestling into the junction of Rex’s shoulder and neck, and he can feel the damp from Cody’s leaking eyes against his skin, the chill of salt-water against too-warm skin. He turns to press a kiss to the crown of Cody’s head. The shaking slowly stills, and the silence between them grows, stagnant and aching. Cody pulls away only to draw his head up and then lean down again, with a kiss that trades Rex’s earlier violence for an equal desperation. Sloppy and open-mouthed, he starts with the corner of Rex’s lips and moves his way along the side of Rex’s face and down his jaw. Rex exhales, soft, and draws Cody to himself tighter. They pause again, a quiet haunting of space left by a soul not there. Cody’s lips return to press against Rex’s jaw, and Rex closes his eyes and tilts his head back, as if he can will their phantoms into form.

Tonight isn’t about desire or arousal or pleasant feeling. It is the desperate worship of two beings left alive; the reassurance that they both draw breath. Rex’s hands begin to wander over every inch of exposed skin he can reach for, fingers digging into hips and thighs. They crawl up Cody’s sides, tracing up against ribs and muscle, pulling soft gasps that Rex can feel exhaled against his skin. Rex briefly reaches up, tracing his knuckles along the edges of Cody’s scars on the left side of his face, before bringing both hands back down to grip his hips. There will be bruises, Rex knows, but he cannot hold on any looser, afraid—irrationally, rationally, gods know the galaxy isn’t making sense now—that if he lets go, he’ll only be grasping at thin air. Cody pressed against him loving him, lips against his skin, these are hard facts, tangibles; these are the things he knows. Rex was never very good at understanding the deeper meaning behind platitudes. He had lovers to sort through the philosophical stuff.

But, as Cody shifts in his lap to work his way down Rex’s neck and along the shoulder while his own mind seems caught between here and half a million parsecs away, Rex finds that some of them make a twisted sort of sense. Luminous beings. Transient, intangible, desperately seeking to cling tight enough to this world to remember that they _live_ in it, or risk losing existence entirely. That is rather how he feels now, pieces missing and floating away, as Cody grasps at every inch he can reach before another one of them breaks.

“They can’t–“ Rex manages to speak out between the moans that Cody seems to continuously coax from his lips. “They can’t take you.” He halts Cody’s work along his shoulder, one hand letting go of the vice grip on Cody’s hips to draw his chin up. “I won’t lose you.” Rex claims Cody’s lips, and if they fade away together in this moment–

Maybe…

Maybe that would be all right.


End file.
